Book of Basketball

by Simmons Bill

  47. Barry defended himself from this rap in a December 1974 SI feature with this eye-popping quote: “We like each other for what we are, not for the color of our skins. I was kidding Charlie Johnson the other day, saying, ‘Don’t tell me about you guys being put down. You had all the great detectives, didn’t you? There was Boston Blackie, Sam Spade, The Shadow …’ It’s a great atmosphere.” Yikes! Cut off his mike! Imagine if somebody said that now. ESPN would have a 12-hour town hall meeting about it. I think Rick Barry made this book 3 percent better. I really do. 48. You couldn’t really call it a “race” because neither guy was at his peak. 49. The complete list: Barry (retired after the ’80 season), Calvin Murphy, Rudy Tomjanovich, Allen Leavell, Billy Paultz, Mike Dunleavy, Tom Henderson, Bill Willoughby. Oof. 50. I made that decision using the same facts, theories, and rules of thumb that govern every other inch of this chapter. If you still think I’m a homer, then allow me to introduce you to my law firm, Buh Low Mee. P.S.: Bird got screwed out of the ’81 Finals MVP as well; Cedric Maxwell won by a 6-to-1 margin in a Duncan/Parker-type situation. Personally, I think people were just excited to vote for someone nicknamed “Cornbread.”

  51. The answers: Gilbert Arenas (question 1); Kobe (question 2); either Nash, T-Mac, or LeBron (question 3). As I wrote, “Usually, the most logical MVP candidate owns two of those questions (and ideally, three). Not this season.” Question 4 hadn’t been created yet. 52. It was part protest (for the shitty season) and part parody (because Time magazine had named

  “You” the 2007 Man of the Year). One of my dumbest ideas ever. It almost caused an Internet riot. I still get emails about it.

  53. Nash and the Suns nearly toppled the San Antonio Donaghys in the playoffs. By the way, the MVP debate should have been decided by a Dallas-Phoenix game in mid-March when Nash emerged as the top dog, notching a 32–8–16 and nearly every clutch play in a double-OT victory. I watched the game with House and JackO and we agreed that it was a seminal moment of the 2007

  season; Nash just wanted it more than Nowitzki did. You could see it. I still remember House hissing, “So much for the MVP race.” How did Dirk end up winning? I have no idea. The one silver lining: when we learned in 2009 that Dirk was engaged to a thirty-seven-year-old former stripper with eight aliases and outstanding warrants for credit card fraud, I spent a solid week refreshing eBay hoping she put his 2007 MVP trophy on there.

  54. That’s not a racial argument. The same process would have happened had he looked like Earl Boykins. People will always gravitate toward an underdog, especially if he has bad hair. 55. My favorite MVP voting fact of 2005: some idiot gave a first-place vote to Amar’e Stoudemire, whose career had been invigorated and reinvented by Nash. That’s like giving your vote for the Nobel Prize in Medicine to Frankenstein’s monster instead of Dr. Frankenstein. 56. The Lakers were shocked by Phoenix in the ’90 playoffs mainly because Kevin Johnson ripped them to shreds. Put it this way: if you were a speedy point guard from 1987 to 1991 and you couldn’t light up the Lakers, you really needed to reevaluate things. 57. The Bucks believed Jones was using drugs, hired PI’s to follow him, placed him on medical suspension for “loss of weight and stamina” and finally fired him. Jones professed his innocence and sued the Bucks for the rest of his owed salary, getting his money when Milwaukee’s “Any time someone loses weight and acts irrationally they’re on drugs” defense held about as much legal weight as the “She was asking for it” defense.

  58. I say ’87 was the best modern race. Magic finished first with a remarkable 24–12–6 and finally seized control of L.A. from Kareem. MJ averaged 37 a game, officially became the Next Great Player and finished second. And Bird submitted his finest season ever (28–9–8, 53% FG, 40%

  3FG, 90% FT and a superb blondafroperm) and finished a distant third only because everyone was tired of voting for him. When you get career years from the greatest forward and point guard ever, along with a breakout year for the best player ever, that’s a pretty good MVP race. 59. This had to be the greatest first-team All-D ever: Pippen, Hakeem, Rodman, Jordan and Dumars, all in their primes. Wow. Not a bad Best Starting Five of the ’90s if you wanted to kick ass defensively.

  60. He also passed question 4: none of the fans from opposing teams would have been outraged by a Kobe pick.

  61. His stats: 35.4 PPG, 5.3 RPG, 4.5 APG, 45% FG, 27.2 FGA … and he won 45 games with Smush, Kwame, Brian Cook, and Chris Mihm playing big minutes—or, as Lakers fans called them at the time, the Shit Sandwich.

  62. Shades of the ’04 Red Sox here: the event itself was eventually exceeded by the media and fans telling everyone how great it was and desperately trying to put everything in perspective. By the way, I include myself—my Red Sox opus was called Now I Can Die In Peace. Still in bookstores with a third edition!

  63. That’s reason number twenty-five why MVP votes need to be made public: if you make a pick that dumb, you should be obligated to defend it. I’m against anonymous incompetence in all forms.

  64. I’m springing one of my favorite theories here: the Tipping Point Friend. Every group of female college friends goes between eight and twelve girls deep. Within that group, there might be three or four little cliques and the backstabbing is through the roof, but the girls get along for the most part and make a big deal about hanging out, doing dinners, having special weekends and everything else. Maybe two of them get married early, then the other ones start dropping in their mid-20s until there’s only five left—the cute blonde who can’t get a boyfriend because she’s either a drunk, an anorexic, or a drunkorexic; the cute brunette who only attracts assholes; the 185-pounder who’d be cute if she lost weight; the not-so-cute one with a great sense of humor; and the sarcastic chain-smoker with 36DDs who isn’t quite cute enough to land anyone but hooks up a lot because of the 36DDs. In this scenario, the cute brunette is the Tipping Point Friend—as long as she’s in the group, guys will approach them in bars, clubs or wherever. Once she settles down with a non-asshole, now all the pressure is on the drunkorexic and if she can’t handle it, then the girl with 36DDs has to start wearing crazy shirts and blouses to show off her guns. My point is this: the Jazz were the sarcastic chain-smoker with 36DDs who hooked up often but never found a serious suitor. By 1997, their competitors had dropped out and they were suddenly the hottest friend in their group. Does that mean they were hot? No!!! No!!!!!!!!! For the love of God, no!!!!!!!!!

  SIX

  THE HALL OF FAME PYRAMID

  BY NOW, YOU’VE probably figured out that I love basketball. When you love something unconditionally, does that mean it’s perfect? Of course not. I find myself tinkering with ways to improve my favorite sport all the time, constantly asking, “Why don’t they do that?” or even better, “Why wouldn’t they do that?” Here, off the top of my head, are thirty-three suggestions to improve the NBA.

  1. I wish the Finals would go back to the 2–2–1–1–1 format. 2. I wish we’d make a pact to agree that (a) there will never be another MJ, and (b) we’re not allowed to compare anyone to him anymore.

  3. I wish we would change the NBA trade deadline to 4:00 a.m. on the Saturday night of All-Star Weekend, just so we’d have at least one megadeal per year consummated after 20 Jack-and-Cokes in the wee hours. Imagine seeing this scrolling across the ESPN

  news ticker in the wee hours: ESPN’s Ric Bucher reports that Portland GM Kevin Pritchard and Thunder GM Sam Presti just finished Patrón shots at the Dallas Ritz-Carlton’s main bar and made the bartender call up ESPN.coms trade machine. 4. Borrowing this idea from a Philly reader named Mike: I wish we’d abolish those hideous in-game coach interviews, simply because I can’t handle hearing someone like Nancy Lieberman get stoned by another coach after she asks what they have to do to stop the other team’s best player. They are running out of ways to say, “I have no idea, Nancy. If I knew that, we’d be winning the game.” This has to end. Like, right now.1

  5. Come to think of it, I wish we didn’t have NBA sideline reporters. But if
we have to have them—and really, I don’t see why—I wish we hired casual female fans like my wife. Why? Because casual female fans notice things during sporting events that nobody else notices. My buddy Strik once sent me a “Bruce Willis in da house!” text during a Clips game—I quickly relayed this information to the Sports Gal, who scanned the lower sections of the arena with the intensity of Jack Bauer looking for a terrorist in a crowded mall. Within about ten seconds she found Bruce sitting courtside to our right, like she had a homing device in her head. Then she spent the next thirty minutes watching him and making comments like “He seems nice” to the lady sitting next to her. So why couldn’t someone like my wife become a sideline reporter? Why pretend this is a serious gig? My wife would file reports from the Blazers’ huddle like,

  “Guys, Greg Oden seems sad, he just seems sad to me, I hope everything’s okay,” or

  “Phil Mickelson and his wife are sitting courtside, and guys, I do not like her roots,” or even “Guys, I’m still trying to get an answer as to why Amar’e Stoudemire is wearing that suit. Lime green is not his color, as we all know.” 2

  6. I wish Utah and New Orleans would switch last names so New Orleans could be the Jazz again. Let’s do the right thing here. America has suffered long enough. 7. I wish WNBA scores and transactions would be banned from all scrolling tickers on ABC and ESPN. I’m tired of subconsciously digesting tidbits like “Phoenix 52, Sacramento 44 F” and thinking, “Wait, that was the final score?” before realizing it was WNBA. Let’s just run their scores on NBA TV with pink lettering. And only between the hours of 2:00 a.m. and 7:30 a.m.

  8. I wish we could agree on a universal fantasy league scoring system that everyone used. Here’s my vote: Has to be auction style; eight categories and double weight for points-rebounds-assists; $50 total for weekly free agent claims (highest bid wins each player); twelve-player roster with one injury spot; you have to start a PG, SG, SF, PF

  and C, with four extra starting spots for a guard, SG/SF, PF/C and a ninth man; extend fantasy through the real NBA playoffs, with weekly head-to-head play wrapping up at the end of the regular season (winner taking home 35 percent of the pot and second place getting 15 percent), then the top four advance to the playoffs (same 35/15

  payout), keep six players and fill out their rosters with players from other fantasy teams that didn’t make it in a straight draft (with number one drafting first each round). Not only did I just solve fantasy basketball in one paragraph, but as the postseason drags on and teams drop out, by the NBA Finals, it would be like the last scene of Rollerball: just a few fantasy owners heroically skating around and trying not to get struck by a flaming motorcycle. You have three Celtics, I have two Hornets, let’s fight to the death. It also brings us closer to our ultimate goal as fans: playing fantasy 365 days a year. Yes, we can. 3

  9. I wish we could choose two teammates to combine for fantasy purposes every season. Back when they played on the Pacers together, I always wanted to combine Antonio Davis and Dale Davis into one roto monster called Über-Davis for my fantasy league. Now I’m thinking that, before every season, we could vote on ESPN.com for a pair of teammates to be combined for fantasy purposes to make drafts more interesting. For instance, Oden and Joel Przybilla could become “Joreg Pryzboden” with an ’09

  average of 14–16 with 2.4 blocks. You wouldn’t have enjoyed rooting for Joreg Pryzboden?

  10. I wish every vote for the major awards and All-NBA teams would be made public. Again I am against anonymous incompetence in all forms.

  11. I wish all footage from the lockout season would be destroyed. As well as tapes of every Knicks-Heat playoff game from the nineties. And any Pistons-Nets playoff game from 2000 on. I am against celebrating bad basketball in all forms. 12. Stealing a premise from Rasheed Wallace, I wish the defending champion’s coach would wear a WWE-style championship belt to every game. If his team loses the title at the end of the season, the incumbent would then hand over that belt to the winning coach (hopefully sobbing like Johnny Lawrence at the end of the 1984 All-Valley Karate Tournament).

  13. Remember my wish for a program that explained the origin of every NBA tattoo? I also wish the league would designate tattoo shops in every NBA city as an “Official NBA Tattoo Store,” load those stores with cameras, then require players to get inked only in those thirty stores. Why? For our new NBA TV reality show, Where Ink Happens. This can’t miss. “Coming up on Where Ink Happens, Michael Beasley stops by to get ‘Beas Breeze’ tattoed on his neck!”

  14. I wish teams weren’t allowed to play music during game action. I don’t need to hear the Jaws theme as the Spurs are trying to stop Kobe with two minutes to go. I really don’t. Also, if your announcer feels obligated to pump up fans with in-game comments like

  “Get on your feet!” or “Lemme hear it —Deeee-fense! Deee- fense!” then you shouldn’t have a basketball team. It’s really that simple.

  15. I wish we would change the NBA’s championship trophy back to a hockey-like cup (which was the case through the late seventies). I also wish we wouldn’t name that trophy after Larry O’Brien, who nearly ran the NBA into the ground and was so shortsighted that his staffers had to talk him into the Slam Dunk Contest. Screw him. Let’s make it a cup and call it the David Stern Cup. He carried O’Brien for those last few years, anyway.

  16. You know how every member of an NHL champion team gets to spend one day with the Stanley Cup during the summer? I wish every member of an NBA championship team spent one day with the David Stern Cup. Talk about a mortal lock for potential comedy … can you imagine certain NBA troublemakers in brief control of the Stern Cup? Would the thing even come back in one piece? Would they lose it? Would they try to smoke pot from it? Who would be the first guy to lose it for a few hours?

  17. During the first three quarters of NBA games, I wish all made baskets from mid-court and beyond were worth four points. Give me one reason why this shouldn’t be a rule. You can’t.

  18. I wish Isiah Thomas would be given his own reality TV show where he takes over businesses, stores and companies and runs them into the ground (like a cross between 30 Days and Wife Swap). In one episode, he could take over a popular Starbucks and immediately fire the most popular barista, raise the prices of chewy marshmallow squares and trade the store’s only espresso machine for a six-month supply of soy milk. The following week, he could become a casino pit boss in Vegas and immediately raise every blackjack table to $25, ban smoking, get rid of every American-born blackjack dealer and force the waitresses to wear more clothes. On and on it would go. 4

  19. I wish NBA cameras would no longer be allowed to zoom in within eighteen inches of somebody’s face. I don’t need any more unpopped whiteheads, acne scars and dangling nose hairs in my life.

  20. I wish Allen Iverson would start a charity so he can hold a celebrity golf tournament. Why? Because what would be more entertaining than the First Annual Allen Iverson Celebrity Golf Tournament? Anything? Anything at all? Imagine AI showing up five hours late for his 9 a.m. tee time. How would he be dressed? How would he react if he missed a four-foot putt? Or imagine a terrified Kyle Korver in a foursome with 50 Cent, Ron Artest and Ice Cube. What about Jim Nantz saying, “Let’s go to Verne Lundquist on sixteen, where there’s apparently been some gunfire again”? I might devote the rest of my life to making this tournament happen. If Michael Douglas can have a celebrity golf tournament, why can’t Allen Iverson? 5

  21. For the NBA League Pass package, I wish we always had the option of watching our favorite team’s telecast with our favorite team’s announcers and local commercials. What’s the point of shelling out two bills a year for the NBA or baseball and not getting your own guys every game? I want Tommy Heinsohn screaming after every call that goes against the Celtics. I want the Foxwoods and Giant Glass commercials. Don’t deprive me!

  22. I wish that if a parent brings a young child to courtside seats at an NBA game and that poor kid subsequently gets trampled by a gigantic bask
etball player diving for a loose ball, then that parent should lose parental rights and Angelina Jolie or Madonna gets to adopt the kid.

  23. I wish we would dump double technicals. If two players have a non-punching altercation, or they keep jawing at each other to the point that they have to be separated and the referees can’t keep the game moving … yes, I can see it. But NBA refs hand out double technicals if two players look cross-eyed at each other.6 What’s wrong with allowing the competitive juices to flow? Isn’t a reasonable amount of trash-talking part of what makes the NBA so much fun?

  24. For NBA All-Star Weekend, I wish we had a H-O-R-S-E contest, a half-court shot contest and a dunk contest with a rim that keeps rising like a high jump bar, and I’m not resting until all three things happen.

  25. I wish we had the option of dumping the Evil Box. Other than Viagra and the Internet, the most dangerous development for marriages in the past two decades has been the Evil Box—that constant score/time box that remains in the corner of our TV screens during games. Once upon a time, you could just tell your wife/girlfriend, “Two more minutes, the game’s almost over” and she’d be totally fooled. It could have been the start of the fourth quarter and she’d never know, except for those dreaded moments right before a commercial when the huge score graphic would come flying out of nowhere. Now? When you pull the “two more minutes” routine, they immediately glance at the Evil Box and know you’re lying. The whole thing sucks. As soon as technology advances to the point that our Internet service is connected to our televisions and everything is controlled by one remote, I’m giving viewers the option to dump the Evil Box if they’re trying to deceive their ladies. 7

  26. I wish the South Park guys (Matt Stone and Trey Parker) would purchase an NBA team. We need them in the league for comedy’s sake. Let’s give them the Nuggets at a steep discount. 8